tammi brewer {six} finished

"please don’t expect me
to always be good and kind and loving.

there are times when i will be cold
and thoughtless
and hard to understand."
- sylvia plath the unabridged journals.

There was a time before all of this when I would hold my sister close at night and distract her from my Mom's yelling, reading her stories and braiding her hair and telling her that everything was going to be ok. That on the day I turned 19 I would move out of our home and away from our mother's poison that reeks off of her drug-pumped body and I'd take her with me. We'd have our own home, with a little garden for her to play in (not a pond, though - I never liked the water), and our own rooms too. There was a time before all of this when I could keep my promises to my little sister, but now I have to watch what I say in fear she'll take it all to heart.

We were happy, once. All four of us. Living in our cosy home above his surgery quarters, playing with toys and various lab equipment strewn around the floor. When Ludo came home I grabbed her little hand and whispered "Hello, little sister, you are precious and I will take care of you, I promise." I kissed her little nose and she wrapped her tiny little hand around one of my fingers and smiled, my parents beaming and unaware of the storm that would soon follow in years to come. (They said she looked just like me as a kid, all smiles and dark curly hair.) The first thing I promised my sister was that I would take care of her, and I've never broken it since. Promises of happy families and being together my parents laid upon us were broken long ago, but not mine. Never mine.

And then the years passed. I taught her to count on our chubby fingers, to speak through small mouths that smiled at every chance we got, to walk on bruised legs from playing and falling over and to talk through my crooked teeth, to use her manners and tread quietly around Peacekeepers in bare-feet. I loved science (I still do) and taught her everything I knew. About plants, about bodies, about the sea and the sky and how rain falls. She might not have been able to understand me, but that didn't matter. I had promised to look after her and I never break my promises.

It was good before. I'd walk her to pre-school every day with her hand in mine (like I promised) and return home with her by my side. Sometimes my friends would join us, and at school they'd tell me every day how cute she was, how well-behaved she was, how much they wish their younger siblings behaved like her. I'd beam up at them with a toothy grin and cuddle Ludo when I got home, who giggled and played with my strands of dark hair and asked if she would be as pretty as me when she was older. "Oh Lucy-Lu, this is just make up" I'd sigh, waving a hand over my face. (I'd read her stories of a little girl called Lucy-Lou, and she'd chant back "Lucy-Lou! Lucy-Lu! Lucy-Ludo-Lu! That's me!" The nickname stuck, I guess.) "You are already beautiful as ever, and when you're older like me you'll be the prettiest girl in the whole of Panem." Through her glasses prescribed by our father (his speciality, of course) and the freckles on her nose she was the epitome of lovely.

Our parents would tuck us in at night and kiss our foreheads and tell us that they loved us. Everything was right, everything was good.

And then it all changed.

~*~


I was 15 when things started to go wrong. This was when Ludo was 6 and my parents no longer talked in front of me. Whispers flooded our house, hushed murmurs and sharp answers to keep at bay from small ears filled the rooms instead. Words like work and girls and night and drugs stained the air I breathed in, began to suffocate me. Worry purged my thoughts as I tucked in Ludo (Mom never did anymore - she was always working late or nowhere to be found) and kissed her forehead, promising her that I would always be there for her. She didn't know why I needed to say it, and neither did I. Another reaping passed and Mom would leave for days at a time. When I did see her, she wasn't whole, wasn't complete. She was deteriorating, like my home. Dad began to hang my certificates up on the walls instead (First in Biology, Second in History of Panem, Most Improved, Best Effort - I applied myself to school to keep my promises to Lu to get us our own home, where I could work and take care of us both for the rest of my life), spending time with me in his surgeries and labs to distract me from Mom's absence.

"It's drugs, isn't it?" I said out of the blue, tired of being kept in the dark. "Mom's addicted." There is no cutting-corners with me, especially when it comes to Ludo's safety. Dad looked up at me, his face weary from fighting that kept me and Ludo up at night (instead of tucking her in I let her sleep in my room, thanking Ripred she was too young to see what was happening to our mother and praying she didn't register their arguing). Defeated, he took off his glasses and put down his pen and for the first time in what seemed like forever, told me the truth.

"You know even the best of people-" he began, but I cut him off. "I know, Dad." And I did, because it's not uncommon to hear about not only Victors but normal, everyday citizens of District 6 getting hooked onto drugs that slowly wipe them dry. You can be the smartest person in your class and still have people close to you fall to the wrath of morphling and substance. With an industry at their fingertips, someone's bound to slip up occasionally. "Even the best of people can't help what drugs do."

And then he did something rather strange, something he hadn't done in years. Arms wrapped around my frame and we just stood there, hugging each-other, soaking in the reality that my Mom was never going to come home again. Drugs had killed her already, her body a withering cage to house what was left of her brain. (Dad sad she'd slipped up once at work, then again, and again. By then it was too late. Not even he could save her.) "It's just you and me now, kid," he said, pulling away to look at me through glazed eyes. "We've got to be brave, you and I."

I didn't cry, but I wanted to. "And Ludo?" I sniffed. "She'll be safe too?"

He promised me she would.

And he broke it the following year.

~*~


"We have to split everything," Dad said across the table in the quietest voice possible. "Even..." (I think I knew it was coming, but I didn't want to believe it.) "Even you two."

I might have screamed, or cried, or sobbed on the ground saying "No, no, no" over and over whilst he tried to comfort me. But either way, all I could register was that Ludo was being taken away from me. I begged with Mom, I pleaded for her to take me instead, but she didn't want me. I'd yelled at her too much, blamed her for everything, fought with her in and amongst my teenage angst, and the drugs decided that she hated me but still, somehow, loved Ludo. I had prayed for her to leave us, but didn't plan on her taking Ludo - the light of my life and the only person I've ever fought for - with her too. She was only 7 and school was closer to Mom's flat and the Registry office had decided it was better for her to live there.

My heart broke the day she left. I hugged her close and promised over and over again that she would see me every other weekend, that I would walk her home from school every single day. "You've got to be brave, Tam" she told me, little brown eyes wide and blinking up at me as I pressed my lips together and wiped away tears. "Be brave. You said that."

"I did," I said. I will, I promise."

Did I mean it? Yes.

Will I ever break a promise to her? I hope I never have to.

"i want to hide the truth
i want to shelter you."
- imagine dragons, demons.